Putting peace before liberalism is crucial

I developed a starkly unapologetic capacity to pray for terrible things under the duress of battle.

By ALICK ISAACS

April 2, 2012 22:03

4 minute read.

IDF reservists 370.
(photo credit: Marc Israel Sellem)

My interest in peace work began to grow after I returned from the war in
Southern Lebanon in the summer of 2006. I was drafted as a military reservist in
the IDF and was, at the grand age of 38, one of the older people to participate
in the combat.

Oddly enough, it was the experience of prayer during the
course of the war that I found most transformative. That summer I
developed a starkly unapologetic capacity to pray for terrible things under the
duress of battle. I begged God to protect me, but I also pleaded with Him quite
graphically to destroy with vengeance the fearful enemies whose very existence
directly threatened my life.

The revelatory experience that accompanied
these prayers was not the discovery that I had it in me to think violent or
vengeful thoughts. The true revelation was the realization that the very same
prayer texts that I had recited with dovish serenity for years, now yielded
quite naturally to the aggressive and hateful interpretations that my acute
circumstances elicited from them. As a modern, liberal, peace-loving Jew, I
discovered in the texts ideas that supported my political adversaries, whom I
had regarded as the enemies of peace.

This discovery planted a thought in
my mind which has far-reaching consequences: that it is necessary to reevaluate
the way the vast majority of liberal people think about peace.

Many
liberal-minded religious people deeply believe that their traditions – Jewish,
Christian and Muslim – promote a peace-loving point of view and remain
astonished if not aggressive about those who in their judgment distort religion
to breed hate and to perpetuate bloodshed. That summer of 2006 made me realize
that not only was this is a simplistic attitude, but buried within it came the
ironic awareness that my dismissal of others’ interpretations of the texts was
doing very little to contribute to peace.

Gradually I understood that
more attention should be given to the shortcomings of the liberal humanist
approach that has monopolized peace efforts in the Middle East for decades and
which might account for the failed efforts to bring about a comprehensive
reconciliation.

Efforts to make “progress” that exclude those whose
commitments to the land and to God are intractable will always fall into the
trap of being more partisan and sectarian than they are peaceful.

The
Catholic theologian Charles Taylor delivered a wonderful lecture in 1999 which
he titled, “A Catholic Modernity?” In it he comments upon the temptation to
build a “common ground” based on “sameness,” shared values, common goals and
higher interests. As appealing as this may seem, Taylor insists that this
liberal approach is flawed precisely because it coercively excludes those people
who do not share its basic assumptions. He criticizes efforts at creating unity
among people that is, “bought at the price of suppressing something of the
diversity in the humanity that God created.”

“No one can deny that
religion generates dangerous passions,” says Taylor, “but that is far from being
the whole story. Exclusive humanism also carries great dangers, which remain
very under-explored in modern thought.”

My point is that a philosophy of
peace based entirely on liberal humanism that fails to acknowledge the role of
God in the public and political lives of millions – represents one of the most
significant and unacknowledged flaws in the history of Middle East
peace-efforts.

THE LIBERAL secular humanism that breeds negotiations and
compromise as the only way to achieve peace, simultaneously suppresses the
convictions to and desire for peace held dear by many people in the region whose
holistic worldview is based on their deeply uncompromising religious
beliefs.

The alternative is an approach to peace, or even multiple
approaches to peace, that aim at being genuinely inclusive and that seek to
learn from the vast wisdom accumulated in Judaism, Christianity and Islam as
these religions are understood (i.e. illiberally) by the vast majority of their
adherents (and the majority of people in general) in the region.

In each
of these religions there are visions of peace that long predate the
enlightenment, that recognize human diversity from a theological (rather than an
exclusively humanistic) perspective and in which the mystical oneness of God,
rather than politically coerced agreement between people, is the model for peace
and coexistence.

Through my work, I have come to know religiously
committed Muslims, Christians and Jews who are unbelievably open to engaging
with others about peace on the condition that they are invited to do so on their
own terms and not under the coercion of the predetermined rules that modernity
and liberalism necessarily impose.

Without harnessing the passions and
energies of these populations, and without including the wisdom and the insight
that they can bring to the table, lasting peace in the Middle East will not be
possible.

By inviting their constructive contribution to the
peace-effort, we may be forced to revisit some of our most basic assumptions
about peace-making, but given the track record of peace efforts in the last
decade or so, that might not be such a bad thing.

The writer is
co-director of the Talking Peace Project and author of A Prophetic Peace,
Judaism, Religion and Politics, Indiana University Press, 2011

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